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Are Winch Wars Heating Up?

A few years ago at SEMA it seemed like the market was flooded with low price winches from China with questionable quality. Not unlike what seems to be happening this year with LED light bars. The winch market seems to be maturing though, and both well-known and new brands are debuting innovative products and designs to battle for your dollars when it comes time to put a winch on the front of your rig. We even saw a gas-powered portable winch! Here are some of the newest features debuting at SEMA.

Superwinch Winch Controller App
Why didn’t we think of this? Superwinch has developed an app that allows you to control your winch through your smart phone. In addition to spooling in and out the app also provides information about line speed, motor temperature, and more. Now if they could just come up with a way to remotely switch from free spooling to engaging the winch…

Warn hook
While Warn raised the bar at last year’s SEMA show with the introduction of their Zeon line, they aren’t resting on their laurels. This year Warn rolled out a line of premium winch accessories that includes a premium winch hook, shackle, tree trunk protector strap, and snatch block. These items features Cerakote coating for maximum protection against wear and abrasion.

Smittybilt 3rd Gen Winches
Smittybilt has updated their line with a new look that provides improved strength with extra ribbing and a matte finish that looks great. Their X20 winch also now uses aluminum clamps to hold the solenoid pack for a clean installation. These winches continue to offer some of the best bang for the buck on the market.

ComeUp Walrus 20
The Walrus is a huge 20,000 pound winch, but it shares many of the features with smaller winches in ComeUp’s line. The mechanical cone brake (see cutaway photo) means that running synthetic cable on the drum is not a concern since the brake mechanism has been moved outside of the cable. The Walrus is waterproof and dustproof and even has a clever spring-loaded tensioner at the back of the winch to keep the cable from unraveling when a load is removed from it.